National Investigation Department of Nepal

The National Investigation Department (NID), Nepal is one of the government’s main intelligence agency collecting information related to the country’s public security, economic crimes, corruption in government and domestic and foreign terrorist activities. It also has a unit that tracks international spies, cross border terrorism, money laundering, narcotics and human trafficking. It comes under the purview of the Home Ministry. Its head office is situated at Baraf bagh (Snow Garden) inside Singha Durbar.

It is believed that NID has about 1000 publicly hired agents all over 75 districts and an unknown number of paid informants.

History

Officially established circa 1960, it used to be called Nepal Guptachar Bhibhag (Secret Service). It was later renamed to Public Relations Office in 1983 to better reflect its mission. When multi-party democracy was restored in 1990, the erstwhile democratically elected government decided to rename it once more to National Investigation Department by enacting Special Service Act on August 28, 1985. The ranks and grade of the employee were aligned with that of regular police force for administrative purpose until 1983. Parliament enacted laws in 1985 to remove the word “police” from their service by passing Special Service Act 1985 and now have civilian titles. Employees of NID are issued fire arms in need but they don't have official uniform and mostly do their work through their undercover agents.

Mission

Their mission varies depending on country conditions. They are concerned mostly with providing human and technical intelligence to the Home Ministry as well as liaison with public. Maintaining domestic peace and security is of primary concerns to the Home Ministry as well as preventing foreign spies and terrorists to conduct their activities in Nepal.

Activities

They have legal power to make arrests, detain or interrogate any individual and are mostly concerned with gathering of human intelligence using networks of paid informants. Their department had been credited with providing timely information to disrupt terrorist activities, identifying child and human trafficking rings, trans-national narcotics traders, money laundering as well as ISI agents from Pakistan and RAW from India. During the Maoist insurgency they often gather human intelligence on their activities but also collected reports on violations of human rights and abuses by security forces as no media and journalists were allowed on these operations. They can interview detainees, verify if proper search warrants were issued prior to arrests and if due legal process were followed. They can also conduct examination of corruption of public officials.

They conduct several covert and clandestine operations which are not generally known for long period of time as the right to declassify such operations is limited to the spy chief and head of the government.

They act as impartial source of information to the Home Ministry and the HQ directly reports to officials at the Home Ministry.

Offices

They have offices in all 75 administrative districts including region offices in five regions and Zonal offices in fourteen Zones. Numbers varies from three to five members at each district level in rural districts and numbers can be higher in urban districts, the number of safe houses they run throughout the country especially in the capital city is literally unknown to anyone. They have both Domestic and International surveillance unit which mainly deals with cross border terrorists, drug trafficking, money laundering. They have their officers deployed at sensitive places like international airport, president and prime minister's office, anti-graft body, customs, immigration and embassies abroad.

Present scenario

It used to be a non-political and effective organisation but in the recent pasts due to the meddling by the politicians of all parties this has been a place of employment for party loyalists where now nepotism and political connection thrives. Results can be witnessed by the increase of massive insecurity and lawlessness that thrives in Nepal these days and have failed to prevent some high-profile murder, abduction and terrorist cases in Nepal. So it has to become far from politics otherwise the country will be in transitional period.

Heads of the NID

  1. Amit Kumar Khattri(DIG)
  2. Harka Bahadur Thapa
  3. Ram Prasad Shrestha
  4. Chand Bahadur Rai
  5. Lekh bahadur Panday
  6. Bishnu Raj Panta
  7. Govinda Karma Thapa
  8. Hari Bahadur Chaudhari
  9. Deviram sharma

See also